What Happened to Japanese Soldiers After WW2? | Animated History

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One Japanese solider captured by the Soviets ended up in Ukraine and settled there, having kids. He even had to inform the Japanese government that he survived and even visited Japan a few years before he passed away.

Being a soldier of the Axis Powers then somehow getting into soviet hands is quite possibly one of the worst endings you can have

You forgot to mention some Japanese POWs in Vietnam and Indonesia chose to stay and support revolutionary forces in the wars of independence against Western colonists too. Many of them perished and wounded in the process, but some of them became high ranking officers and even started a new family with locals. In Vietnam, we call these people “New Vietnamese”

Met an old German soldier who was captured at Stalingrad then shipped to Siberia for 6 years, stayed at his house on my vacations for seven years, heard many stories of his experiences 🙏🏻

It would be great to hear about life in Japan before, during and right after the WW2.

“Replaced by something far worse. He is finally in Siberia.” DEAR GOD

My wife had a grandfather who passed away a few years ago at the ripe age of 98. He was drafted as a young boy into the Japanese army and after the war he was sent of to Siberia. After he came home he lived every day to the fullest. He drank a beer and ate his favorite food which was meat and rice almost every day. When I asked him about how POW life was in Siberia he mostly just mentioned the bitter never ending cold. He had some other stories as well but I wont write them all down here. He was just glad to be home and to be done with the war after he came back. I remember there was supposed to be a veteran meeting and asked him if he was going. "No," he answered, ""just about everyone is dead now so no point of going." lol. I was most impressed that he still had has mind and senses all the way up to his passing. They have like these group activities for a the elderly here in Japan with caretakers from retirement communities . He once went to one of those gatherings and after he came home he was like "No more, everyone there are just senile old men and women and the staff kept talking to me like I was a baby" even though he probably was the oldest of the bunch. Anyway rest in peace Shinichiro, you were a kind man and dearly missed.

There was also this Imperial Japanese soldier who hid in the Philippine jungle for 30 years after WWII, he refused to acknowledge that his country had surrendered and thought that messages he was receiving were just traps to lure him out and kill him, until a Japanese student found him, and asked why he wouldn't surrender, he said that he was waiting for orders of surrender from a superior officer. Then there were unsubstantiated claims of Imperial Japanese soldiers still hiding in the mountains of the Philippines until the 80's they were hiding in fear of getting court-martialed for desertion.

My grandmother was Japanese. I was always afraid of asking about her past until it was too late. On her last days she started to speak in Japanese and I was absolutely clueless as to what she was asking for, and she passed away without me finding out anything about her wartime experience. Thank you for shedding light on this dark period of asian history.

I know a Japanese lady who used to be a nurse and one of the patients she cared for was a kamikaze pilot. The way she told it he was in a state of limbo where he was happy that he was able to go home to his family but deeply ashamed that he never carried out his duty. It was always striking to me how she said that he never volunteered to be a kamikaze as you didn't just say no to a call for kamikazes and yet he was still ashamed that he never did what he 'volunteered' to do. He sounded like he was just a scared kid who didn't want to die, a similar sentiment my grandpa had.

As a US Marine pilot stationed at MCAS Iwakuni in 1974, a fellow Japanese pilot and I made a visit to Kyushu prefecture so he could introduce me to his family. Both of us, being in our early 20s, decided to go out to a saki bar. Short story: both of us were refused service and requested to exit the bar. Why? I was 'gaijin' (a foreigner) and was not welcome; THIRTY years after the war ended. Draw your own conclusion. (Later, I married his beautiful younger sister - with the full approval of his father and family!)

My father, as part of the U.S. Army's post-war occupation in Japan, spoke with one of the Russian released Japanese soldiers who had returned from Siberia around 1948-50. This POW was in a Lumber Camp and told my father that they worked, in the Winter months, cutting down the trees in the bitter cold and after the snow melted (Spring or Summer) they would return to cut down the 10 to 15 foot stumps. Good job Armchair. Well told.

The Japanese soldier who fought in the Philippine Jungle for 30 years must be fun playing against in Hide and Seek when he was a kid

I actually know a Japanese Marine before he died that lives down the road from me and as a kid with a bit more naive about WWII. I got the courage to ask him how he felt about being on the losing side of the war and now living in the US, the enemy of his former state. What he said will never leave my mind, "I did what was asked of me by my Emperor and that is the only thing that mattered to me, if he said the US is no longer our enemy, they are no longer my enemy." That level of discipline...

My dad was a young air force enlisted man in the occupation in the early fifties and had a lot of former Japanese soldiers working for him. He was a very young man and easily learned the language, something that shocked me to find out as a teen. He still likes Japanese language TV and movies to this day and has relayed some of the stories the work gangs and their honchos told him. He always admired the Japanese work ethic and has nothing bad to say about them.

My great grandad was one of the "Japanese POW " ( He was Korean, just like how Indians fought for British, similar case ) in China. He later came back to Pyungyang only to flee the Communists. He later fight for the South when the Korean War broke out fighting.

A professor I had in Tokyo in 2000-2001, who was just retiring then, and was a kid during WW2, told me that kids were being taught how to hide in holes in the ground with magnetic mines, and when a tank ran above or nearby, stick it to the tank and get killed along with the crew in it in the explosion. He also told me that Japan - and for good reason, because it's true - treated the people who fought the war, after it, as the worst generation, as the scum of humanity ("Ningen no kuzu", is the expression he used) and everything that was Japanese became so disliked in society that many did a voluntary effort to de-japanize themselves, even if a bit too hard. Overreacting is a very Japanese thing to do.

Would've been interesting to go into episodes of Japanese troops remaining mobilized and being used by the European allies to try and regain order in their colonies. Japanese troops fought under Briitsh, Dutch and French command against the Vietnamese and Indonesian revolutionaries. (And some of them would end up joining those revolutions themselves, rather than go home.)

These WW2 Japanese soldiers are ashamed of surrendering but not ashamed of the atrocities they've committed!